Author(s) :

Rishi Desai.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Imagine boarding a plane, unaware that a hidden software system—one you’ve never heard of— could override the pilot and send the aircraft into a nosedive. When Boeing introduced MCAS, it was meant to solve a problem. Instead, it created a deadly one. The truth is that this kind of event happened in the series of accidents involving Boeing’s 737 MAX, which was found to have MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) linked as the main cause of two fatal crashes that killed 346 people. The crashes raised widespread concerns about engineering, regulatory, and corporate responsibilities. Investigations revealed failures not only in technology but also in corporate accountability and basic ethics. However, little research has examined how these failures affected public trust in aviation safety, particularly on social media. Using BlueSky’s API, a dataset of 10,455 posts dating back to 2021 was collected and filtered from all of BlueSky’s posts using Boeing-related hashtags to ensure relevance. VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) sentiment analysis was applied to measure polarity scores across the dataset, using standard thresholds to classify positive, neutral, and negative sentiment. Revealing that average sentiment remained negative, with a mean composite score of –0.43 across the study period and sharp declines following major Boeing related incidents. The Boeing 737 MAX crisis demonstrates how failures in corporate responsibility and inaccuracies can weaken public trust in aviation safety. This trust can only be rebuilt through better methods of transparency, enhanced regulation and enforcement, and a deepened commitment to accountability to ensure this trust is maintained by the aviation industry.